


Aint Goin' Nowhere

by masterroadtripper



Series: Life At Lightning Flats [2]
Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Farm/Ranch, Canonical Character Death, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 11:35:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29117613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masterroadtripper/pseuds/masterroadtripper
Summary: Four years after moving out to Lightning Flats, Ennis wakes from a nightmare that feels all too real, but Jack is there to remind him that, for the time being, they're safe.[Set January 22, 1968]
Relationships: Ennis Del Mar/Jack Twist
Series: Life At Lightning Flats [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1939537
Comments: 3
Kudos: 49





	Aint Goin' Nowhere

**January 22, 1968**

_He was old. His hands had been weathered down and beaten up from years of work. He was holding a postcard._

_Deceased. The eight words that he’d always known he’d see one day but had never imagined it would have been so soon. So close to getting to see him again. And now, he never would._

_The red stamp that said the one person on the planet who knew him better than he had ever known himself was dead._

_Gone._

_Forever._

_Never to wake up tomorrow._

_Never to send him another postcard._

_Never to open another bottle of whiskey against a background of stars._

_Never to fall asleep next to each other, arms wrapped around each other._

_Tears jumped to his eyes and those old and weathered hands wiped at his face before going to dig through his pockets for some loose change._

_A woman’s voice answered the phone and he knew it was her. The woman that he had never really wanted but had married because that was what he had been expected to do. The woman who was supposed to keep him safe and out of trouble when he couldn’t against their mountain backdrop._

_He managed to introduce himself to the woman, her voice just like how he’d expected it._

_Then she’d said, “Jack was pumping up a flat on the truck out on the backroad when his tire blew up.”_

_He knew she was lying._

_He knew she was wrong._

_He felt it in his gut._

_He just knew it hadn’t been an accident._

_He’d been killed. Killed for what they had together._

_“_ _The rim slammed into his face and broke his nose and jaw, knocked him unconscious on his back,” she continued and he felt himself slouching against the glass of the phone booth._

_A piece of nail board being embedded into his tires, the truck that had been following him down the secluded country road stopping. Maybe stopping to help, maybe stopping to hurt. More likely stopping to hurt. The cronies from his father in law dragging him away from the truck, tire irons at the ready._

_“_ _By the time somebody had come along, he had drowned in his own blood.”_

_He wasn’t there. He hadn’t been there to keep him safe and protected._

_His man was a dreamer._

_Had been a dreamer, but dreams only get you so far in a world that only wanted to kill. A world that wanted nothing to do with what they had._

_People that were willing to smash open his face with solid metal until he could no longer breathe._

_Until his body gave up. Realized that it couldn’t keep going and gave in._

_Gave in, on the side of a highway._

_Utterly alone._

* * *

“Ennis,” he heard Jack’s voice say, “hey Ennis, wake up love.”

Jerking awake, Ennis launched himself to his feet, taking the sheets with him as he tumbled off their small bed in Jack’s old bedroom. Standing in his underwear in the cold of the room, the sheets were pooled at his feet and Jack was looking at him like he’d just managed to bring the Pentecost that his ma talked about all the time down to earth.

“Ennis,” Jack said, reaching out towards him. Looking down at the bed, Ennis locked eyes with Jack, his brilliant blue eyes staring back. He wasn’t dead. He was alive, those sky blue eyes staring back at him with a certain fear but also the confusion that Ennis almost wanted to kiss off his face, was his heart not racing faster than Garbo when he was whistled for across the paddock.

Skin stretched taught against bones, muscles outlining his joints from their hard work on the Twist Ranch over the past years, Ennis swallowed hard and realized that he’d just had a bad dream. A nightmare. While he knew it wasn’t real, the cold tendrils of fear and deep-rooted pain still poked at his arms and chest.

Reaching out aimlessly, he reminded himself that Jack’s facial features were still chiselled and intact, not blood-stained and not ruined outcroppings of destroyed flesh. Jack was alive. Alive, breathing, and still here. Nothing had happened. They were fine.

“You’re here,” Ennis whispered as Jack laced his chilled but very much alive fingers into Ennis’s aimlessly searching ones.

“Yeah I’m here,” Jack replied, a look of realization dawning on his face, “I’m never leavin’, you know that.”

Ennis couldn’t really formulate a reply but reached down to gather the blankets off the floor into his arms and dump them back onto the bed, covering up Jack’s bare skin that was rising to gooseflesh in the morning air. Skin at the elbows down still slightly tanned from their work over the summer with only a few small blemishes across his collarbone that Ennis had put there just the evening before when Jack’s mostly deaf mother had retired to bed early, Ennis watched as Jack tucked the sleep heated sheets back around himself. Jack was alive.

Once everything was back on their bed, Ennis slowly crawled back under the covers but instead of laying down, he leaned back against the wall, bare torso exposed to the morning air while he felt his heartbeat jerking around inside his chest like it couldn’t quite get free from his dream.

Jack pushed himself over onto Ennis’s chest, letting him drape his arms around his firm shoulders as the cold fear started dissipating and Ennis let himself remember that no one was watching them. That by holding Jack as close to his chest as he wanted wasn’t going to get either of them killed. Not out here. Not in the safety of Jack’s childhood bedroom.

After a couple of minutes laying together in the silence, the only sound the thrumming of his own heartbeat in his ears and the occasional blast of wind against the house, Ennis felt one of Jack’s hands reach behind himself and rest on Ennis’s chest over his pounding pulse.

“Cowboy,” Jack whispered, “it’s alright.”

Ennis said nothing but looked down at Jack’s features, reminding himself that they were fine, intact and not blood-stained and destroyed.

“It’s alright,” Jack repeated, the hand not over Ennis’s heart tightening painfully but securely around Ennis’s forearm, “‘am right here. Aint never goin’ nowhere without you cowboy. Ya know tha’. So tell me, wha’ ya’ really was dreamin’ ‘bout?”

Ennis closed his eyes and shook his head. He couldn’t talk about it. He didn’t want to. Because he knew that it was inevitable that someone would find out about the two of them. It was a minor miracle that Ms. Twist hadn’t made a bigger fuss about the two of them sharing Jack’s old room. Maybe the bedroll on the floor in the corner was a better decoy than Ennis had originally thought.

“Ennis,” Jack said coaxingly, both of his hands returning to Ennis’s forearm and stroking gently, “I aint gonna be mad.”

“‘A know,” Ennis muttered so low that he wasn’t sure Jack had even heard him.

“It’s alright,” Jack returned to muttering, just running his hands up and down Ennis’s arm as he waited for Ennis to compose his thoughts, the words getting all jumbled up in his head and the feeling of barbed wire closing in around his throat.

He swallowed hard a couple of times before leaning down to press a kiss to Jack’s hair, dry and a little crispy from the harsh winter wind. Up on Brokeback, Ennis knew that the simple motion would have started something else entirely, but he just wanted comfort and nothing else. He didn’t want anything else right now other than to just have Jack close by and surround himself in all that was him.

Finally, Ennis managed to whisper, “dreamed that somethin’ happened ta’ you.”

Jack didn’t say anything. He was patiently silent as the sound of Ennis swallowing reverberated through the little room.

“Dreamed they killed you,” Ennis said, the words feeling like they were getting ripped out of his chest, “real nasty like. ‘nd I wasn’t there.”

Jack said nothing but turned over so he was awkwardly leaning against Ennis’s chest. Wrapping his arms around Ennis and pulling him close, he pressed kisses to his cheeks, neck and chest, whispering over and over again, “I’m here, aint goin’ nowhere.”

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to have this ready to actually post on January 22 - yes, I missed that deadline by almost ten whole days - but as my favourite character Heath Ledger ever played, I wanted to do something in honour of the 13 anniversary of his passing. 
> 
> I really can't believe that it's been 13 years already. 
> 
> RIP


End file.
